The arrangement of rotary valves in a
triangular pattern was not uncommon among horn makers
in Bohemia and the vicinity of Vienna as an
alternative to the Vienese
pumpen valves. This innovation was no doubt an
attempt to reduce the "acoustic resistance" due to the
sharp angles of tubing found in the valve clusters of
the Vienna horn and in-line rotary valves. Other
examples of triangular valve arrangement are known by
Josef
Müller, Prague; Leopold Uhlmann, Jr.,
Vienna; Josef Glassl, Graslitz; Jos. Fotter,
Mladá Boleslav, Bohemia, Friedrich
Gessner, and Josef
Wolf. The modern Czech firm, M.Jiracek
a Synove, makes a similar Double Horn (Model
Nr.101 "Supin") in F and B♭ with four rotary
valves arranged in a square. "This unique design
allows the airstream to pass through the valves
unidirectionally - with acoustic resistance reduced
incredibly."

Based on the valve slide lengths this horn should be
crooked in F or E♭, however it was received with an
A-crook (A=430 hz.).

Antonin
Holý (or Anton Holly1;
1835-1926)
was born in Velké, Lohovice near to Radnice. He
was the son of Vojtěch Holý, overman (foreman),
working earlier as a teacher assistant, and Ann
Mitterbach from Jáchymov,
Antonin studied lutherie and violin making in Prague. He
also became fine cellist and was associated with
violinist Ferdinand Laube, the Onříček Family,
Antonín Dvořák and Otakar
Ševčík. In 1864 he displayed a flugelhorn
in C and euphonium, and from 1865 to 1897 he was making
and selling brass instruments. He worked in Vienna
before settling in Pilsen, Bohemia (now Czech Republic),
where he was interested in the musical life and national
fight.2 In 1880 he received a burgess-ship
in Pilsen because of his work and by 1891 he had a
workshop at Velesvlavínová st. No. 11.
There there is also a listing: "Holy Anton,
Weleslavingasse 11. Brass instrument workshop and shop
with string instruments and percussion instruments." In
addition to supplying musical instruments to Pilsen and
vicinity in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
century, he also exported to the United States.

There are three of his instruments in the Czech National
Music Museum: a violin (inventory number E_625), a
guitar (E_797), and a cittern (E_1275).

Both of Antonin Holý's daughters married
inspectors of the State Railways: Marie (b. February 26,
1864) married Václav Komárek and Anna (b.
March 17, 1867) married Václav Dobrý.

Antonin Holý died in Pilsen in 1926.

The second inscription on the bell garland (below), "Sp.
Voj. vysl. v Plzni" (
Speciální vojenský vyslanec v
Plzni) probably describes Anton Holy's position as
the "Consultant to the Military Plenipotentiary of
Pilsen."

Albert D. Hackebarth
(1854 - 191?) was born in Berlin, Germany on June 20,
1854. He played extra horn in the Bavarian State Opera
Hofkapelle Orchestra (Munich) from 1878-1880. That
section included Franz Strauss (1822 - 1905),
principal, and also the brothers
Franz Xaver Reiter and Josef Reiter. Mr.
Hackebarth emigrated to the United States in 1880. In
1882 he became second horn of the Boston Symphony
Orchestra. In 1885 he moved to New York to take the
position of principal horn in the New York
Philharmonic under Theodore Thomas. He was also a
member of Thomas' sixty-six-piece orchestra and
probably gave the American premiere of Tchaikovsky"s
Fifth Symphony on March 5, 1889. In the fall of 1890
he returned to Boston to become the BSO's principal
horn. In that position he took part in the U.S.
premieres of Don Juan by Richard Strauss
(1891) and Dvorak's Eighth Symphony (1892).
While in Boston he was a founding member of the Molé
Chamber Music Club and the Longy Club. He
remained in the first chair of the horn section until
the end of 1905-1906 when he shared that position with
Max Hess. In 1907 Albert Hackebarth was moved to
seventh of eight horns, where he remained until he
retired at the end of the 1912-1913 season.

In the above photo, Albert
Hackebarth is shown holding a triangluar pattern
single horn very similar to the subject horn by Anton
Holy.

Acknowledgments

Special thanks to
Peter Balog Documentation Center for Popmusic and New Media,
Czech Museum of Music
(Centrum pro dokumentaci populární hudby a
nových medií České muzeum hudby Praha),
for providing biographial information about Anton
Holý from the files of Dr. Jindřich Keller (1939-1981)
in the Museum's Department of Musical Instruments.

Notes

1. The name "Holý"
in Czech language means "bare" or "bald", and has no religious
significance. Some immigrants to the U.S. have changed it to
"Holly."(back)

2.
According to James Naughton: "The second half of the
[nineteenth] century saw strengthening of the status of Czech
language and culture vis-a-vis German within the Lands of the
Bohemian Crown; this included steady advances in Czech
educational provision at all levels. After the establishment of
a new constitution in 1861, triggered by Austrian defeat in
Italy, Czech claims to historic state rights were promoted by
middle-class nationalist politicians, led by Rieger, who for
some years pursued this goal by boycotting both the Vienna
Reichsrat and the Bohemian diet. The 1866 Austro-Prussian war,
which resulted in Austrian defeat at Königgrätz
(Sadová, near Hradec Králové) and a brief
Prussian occupation of Prague, led to further constitutional
change, in the form of the 1867 Compromise or Ausgleich, under
which Hungary received far-reaching autonomy. Attempts to
replace Dualism by a tripartite solution giving Bohemia its own
historic autonomy foundered in 1871, lacking support from German
Liberals, Hungarians and the Emperor. Franz Joseph was never
crowned in Prague with the crown of St. Wenceslas. In 1878-9 the
Czechs recognised the failure of their policy of passive
resistance by returning to the Bohemian diet and the Reichsrat,
joining a government coalition under Count Taaffe along with the
German clericals, aristocrats and Poles. In return Czech was
designated an “outer” language, recognised for public use in
courts of law and government offices, and in 1882 Prague
University was divided into Czech and German institutions. By
the mid 1880s it was the Germans' turn to feel under some
threat. By the end of that decade the original Czech nationalist
party, known as the “Old Czechs”, had lost ground heavily to the
more radical, initially oppositionist “Young Czechs”, but in the
mid nineties the Young Czech party itself joined the government
of Badeni, who agreed to make Czech an “inner” language. But a
storm of German protest forced the rescinding of this change.
This was a period of bitter nationalist agitation, accompanied
by a good deal of upward Czech economic, social and cultural
mobility. The broadening electoral franchise, while
strengthening Czech political influence, also undermined the
older nationalist parties, especially when in 1907 universal
manhood suffrage was introduced for the Reichsrat elections, for
this encouraged the formation of new parties reflecting diverse
socio-economic interests, such as the Agrarians and the Social
Democrats, with a separate Czech Social Democratic party from
1911. Class interests cut across and fragmented nationalist
interests, but also vice versa."(back)